


Harris Burdick's House

by Traykor



Category: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - Chris Van Allsburg
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28118994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traykor/pseuds/Traykor
Summary: On a forgotten island is a house that isn't quite there. Would you like to go?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Harris Burdick's House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meltha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/gifts).



> I have loved Chris Van Allsburg's work for a very long time, and this book in particular. I've always found it a bit eerie, as many of the pictures are a bit menacing if you look closely.

If you take an oil lamp and walk backwards counterclockwise around the Tiffany Street Pier three times beginning at exactly thirteen minutes after midnight, when you finish your walk and turn around at the very end of the pier there will be a ferry.

It won’t quite be there. It will linger somehow halfway between there and not there. If you keep steady though, and keep your eyes steady on it, it will stay there enough just long enough to climb on board.

It will take you to North Brother Island. Not the North Brother Island that is now. The abandoned overgrown woods with the decaying buildings that you would see if you looked towards the island from anywhere else around it in New York City right now, that is not the island you will arrive at. No, the island as it might have been. The island that almost was, before it was abandoned. The ferry will instead pull into a perfectly well maintained dock—not the rotting derelict one you might have seen from the shore before. 

If you go to North Brother Island by way of the ferry that isn’t quite, Harris Burdick will meet you at the dock. He doesn’t get many visitors. That is, of course, intentional. Most people wouldn’t understand. They might think the whole thing a bit, well, ghoulish.

But then, most people think you ought to leave ghosts alone. They don’t know that sometimes, it is better if you don’t. If you ask Harris Burdick, he will say it doesn’t matter either way, his reasons are his own, and there isn’t much he could do to stop now, is there?

There are a great many ghosts on North Brother Island. Those who came to recover from their illnesses and didn’t. The many, many souls who washed ashore one fateful day, when the _General Slocum_ caught fire. Sometimes, even, the ghosts of Rikers Island nearby don’t make it very far when they try to leave.

If you mind ghosts, keep your eyes straight ahead. You’ll see just the island as it wasn’t quite, filled with people who are to all appearances there but steadily ignoring you. Politely. If you glance to the side you will see the island as it is, the crumbling buildings, the decay, the forest. It’s best not to think too hard about the people.

If you are polite, and ask gently, Harris Burdick will lead you through the streets of the little island to a quiet corner that was forgotten even when the living roamed those streets, to a low building that has, perhaps, always been not quite there. Harris Burdick, at least, will claim it was this way long before he came to the island. He didn’t create the place, he is very careful to say. It was not of his design. He was the one who discovered what it could do.

He was a researcher here once. A scientist who wanted merely to explore the more extreme bounds of novel treatments to keep the island’s inhabitants alive a little longer. He’d hoped to find a way to lend vitality from one person to another, the way some proposed one might lend blood. It took a long time to be able to find the shadow door on the island, but when he did it allowed him to advance so much of his research! A way to draw on one person’s creative energies to revive another. He will show you.

When you step inside, you will see it is set up as a gallery. Fourteen framed canvases hang, suspended from the ceiling along the two sides of the one long room. Each seems to touch upon a…something…in the air. A blurriness. A stronger edge of not-there than already evident around you. He will tell you to be careful to stay on this side of the pictures. Before each one is a book on a stand. Each book bears a title and a short inscription.

He had been quite at a loss, he will tell you, when the island became abandoned. How to continue to draw these vital energies? It took a great deal of experimentation to learn that anyone anywhere could provide, if they were connected to the island in some way while creating. Hence the pictures. He knew the editor would not be able to resist showing them to someone.

They have been a wild success.

Perhaps, as you are there, one of the books will open. Perhaps someone is looking at a copy of _The Mysteries of Harris Burdick_. Perhaps a teacher has pulled out the portfolio edition and assigned a story as a creative writing exercise.

If one of the books opens, the pages will begin to fill on their own, and beyond the picture shadows will appear. The blurred space will sharpen.

Perhaps you would like to watch the story?

  
Mr. Linden’s Library

Sara Ann loved to read. She had always read whenever she could, day and night, for most of her life. Big books, small books, books that were fiction and books that were not, books on cats and books on books. She was the sort of child who parents took flashlights from, so she wouldn’t read when she was supposed to be sleeping. Eventually, however, very literate children grow up, and Sara Ann was no exception. She went to school, and read. She went to college and read. She was reading when she met her husband, and right up until the time her daughter was born.

“Now I have someone to read to.” 

And read she did. Sara read to Mary from the moment she was born.

This might have been the end of this little tale, except for one thing.

Mary did not like to read.

Mary was an active child, loving outdoors and wild things, not dreary old books that keep one shut up in doors. By the time she was old enough to talk, She had found ways of avoiding her mother’s passion.

“Mary, let’s read together.”

“Look at the sky Mama, so blue, can I go play?” she would say, or “the flowers are blooming today, I promised I’d visit them,” and then run off to her wild things. And so, Sara Ann’s precious childhood books lay neglected—for she had kept every one—with no one to read them.

Mary got older, and older, and stayed out of doors so much, her mother rarely saw her indoors. She didn’t like school, of course, even though she was a bright child. School was too much like reading, and one had to sit inside while the birds sang and the wind blew or it snowed or other fun things passed by. Sara began to be depressed when she thought of her daughter.

One night, when Mary was ten, Sara met some other parents from Mary’s school.

“I can’t get Mary to read!” complained Sara, “She hates school—I don’t know what to do!”

Mrs. Higgins gave Sara a patient smile. “My boy was like that once.”

“Your son? He’s one of the best readers in Mary’s class! What did you do?”

“Oh, I had some help.” Mrs. Higgins pulled out a business card. It read:

Mr. Linden’s Library  
**_A private establishment_**  
555 Codex Way

**_A Book to Help You_ **

“A book to help you?”

“Oh yes, a book from Mr. Linden will turn your Mary into as good a reader as my boy.” Sara Ann thought it over for a while, and decided to visit Mr. Linden.

The shop turned out to be an old, old Victorian house with a sign in the front window—RING BELL ONCE FOR MR. LINDEN. The man who answered the door was plump, white-whiskered, and looked as old as the house.

“Please come in. What can I do for you?” His voice was very soft and gentle. Sara Ann immediately felt at ease.

“It’s my daughter, she won’t read—she hates it.” Sara Ann spoke rather nervously.

“You want to make a reader out of her, hmm?” He gazed at her over a pair of small, round glasses.

“Yes, an avid reader, a reader who will read every chance she gets—right now all she wants to do is play outside.” Mr. Linden smiled a wry smile.

“I’ll see what I have.” He shuffled off to a back room. A few minutes later, he returned with a large black book. The cover was embossed with a design of creeping, entwined vines.

“This book is quite ensnaring and is certain to draw her in. However, you must take it away at the end of the week and return it to me. Do not let her keep it longer, no matter what. Understand?”

“I understand. I’ll bring it back,” Sara smiled at the beautiful book.

When she got home, she immediately called Mary in from the back yard. Mary was less than thrilled with her book.

“Mommm, why are you giving me this?” Mary rolled her eyes and sagged her shoulders.

“Just give this one a try, please?” Reluctantly, Mary climbed the stairs to her room. She set the book on her bed. The cover seemed to glow. The vines were so detailed, Mary thought they were moving. Intrigued, Mary opened the book.

Three days later, Mary was at school hanging with her friends.

“Hey Mary, you look kinda tired, you OK?” one friend asked.

“I’ve just been up late lately.” Mary set her bag down on the table and took out the book. “My mom got me this weird book.” Her friends gathered around to look at it.

“What’s it about?” Mary thought for a moment, then realized with horror she couldn’t remember the story—just impressions of a wild jungle and adventure that she was somehow involved in. “Um, it’s just fiction stuff.”

“Hey, what’s this?” One girl was holding up a piece of vine.

“I have no idea,” Mary said in a rush, “I have to go.”

Four more days passed, and Mary went nowhere without the book. She still could not remember what happened while she was reading, just a feeling that she had enjoyed it. On the seventh day, Mary’s mother came for the book.

“I have to give it back now.”

“Please, please can’t I keep it? I love this book.”

Sara was so happy to see Mary reading, she decided to let her keep it a little while longer. After all, she thought, what harm can a book do? Mary returned upstairs with her book clutched tightly to her chest. She unmade her bed and lay down with the book by her side, reading by the lamp light. The room faded as Mary heard the call of the jungle fill her ears.

On the eighth day, Sara was trying to call Mary down for breakfast when the phone rang.

“Hello, oh, Mr. Linden… yes, Mary still has the book. I don’t see… take it away now? But why… what do you mean by dangerous?” Sara dropped the phone and ran upstairs. Opening the door of Mary’s room, she saw her daughter lying on her bed, the book open beside her, fast asleep. Sara walked over to the bed, and then noticed the vines—green, tangled vines—growing from the center of the open book. Sara began to shake Mary, but there was no response.

“Mary, Mary, MARY!”

He had warned her about the book, now it was too late.

The End.  
  


The book before the painting will close once the story is done. The shadows will disappear.

Harris Burdick will look, if you are looking very closely, just a little bit younger. The island that was will look just a little bit more there than not quite. The people will seem just a touch more aware.

You may wonder what would happen if a great many people all wrote stories at once.

Perhaps it is an odd way to fuel one’s home. Is it stealing, to lend inspiration and take creative energies in return? Was it a cruel trick, to have sent the paintings and teasers out into the world, knowing how many wouldn’t be able to resist writing a story to match? It is, after all, mostly children who write the stories, and children have so much creativity to spare, don’t they?

If you ask such questions, Harris Burdick won’t answer. He isn’t a fan of philosophy. Not his subject. You will have to find other things to speak about.

You have a bit of time still.

You will have to wait, after all, until the next ferry. It leaves at precisely midnight.

Don’t miss it.

**Author's Note:**

> As the story says, Mysteries of Harris Burdick is often used as fodder for creative writing classes. The story in the middle is my own from just such an assignment long ago. This is its first appearance on the internet, intentionally left as child me wrote it.  
> North Brother Island is a real place, and you really can see it from many places in the Bronx. Owned by the city now, it is used as a bird sanctuary and people aren't allowed anymore.


End file.
